Fancy Pants Adventures

Fancy Pants Adventures was one of the great Flash platformers, and its whole reputation rests on how it felt to move. Brad Borne built the game around momentum - running, sliding, wall-jumping and carrying speed through loops with a fluidity that most commercial platformers of the era never managed.

The presentation is deliberately rough: a stick figure in coloured trousers, drawn like doodles in the margin of a notebook, on levels that look sketched rather than designed. That art choice made the physics feel even better by contrast.

The pencil as a weapon is a lovely touch. It fits the aesthetic, it fits the tone, and it's the only sensible armament for a character who exists on notebook paper.

It also spread almost entirely through word of mouth on Flash portals, which is a very specific kind of internet fame that browser games can no longer achieve.

This collection covers Fancy Pants Man and his gear. Good for anyone who remembers playing this in a school computer lab.